Authors: Ken Englade
“And you know what,” he said, choking back a sob, “I never paid him that ten dollars, either.”
14
One of Andy’s least visible character traits, perhaps recognized at that time only by Becky and a few very close friends, was his burning ambition to be rich. What he wanted, he confided to his wife, was not just to make a good living, which is what he was doing, but to make more money than he could ever make working for someone else. And he wanted to make it quickly. Feeding this desire was Ken Swarts, who was fueled by a similar aspiration. For hours, they huddled together over cold beer, dreaming up highly improbable plans to make a million.
Finally, they felt they had worked out a scheme: They would open their own business, one that dealt in movable outdoor signs. Swarts’s mother would finance the venture. They figured they would soon pay her back and then begin reaping really big bucks. This suited Andy perfectly. At age twenty-four, with a proven talent for management and a valuable occupational skill to fall back on, he seemed driven to find out how far he could reach.
In late 1979, only a few months after the birth of Becky and Andy’s second daughter, named, ironically, Crystal, Andy was ready to make his move. He and Swarts, together with their families, would go to Florida and launch their enterprise there. Almost immediately, though, Becky voiced her objections. With two children under four, Becky was not at all convinced that a move to a state where neither had ever been to undertake a risky new business was the right thing to do. By leaving Houston they would be abandoning a world in which they were secure, one in which they had become entrenched, both socially and occupationally. In the end, though, she followed her training more than her instincts; in the Assembly of God, wives followed their husbands and never complained.
In retrospect, Becky’s doubts proved to have been valid. The Hoppers had been in Florida only six weeks before the new business went belly-up; in that period they failed to sell a single sign and Swarts’s mother announced that she was withdrawing her financial backing. The Hoppers and the Swartses had no choice but to return to Houston.
By then, too, the friendship between the two couples had cooled considerably. Perhaps it was because of their shared experience as unsuccessful entrepreneurs. When they returned to Houston, Becky resumed her role as homemaker and Andy went back to the Ford dealership.
It was only temporary, though. By then, Andy’s father had opened his own body shop business. It was not long before Andy quit his regular job at the dealership and began doing independent car appraisals for his father, working on his own as a self-employed businessman. Again, it was something Andy proved he could do well. But after a few months he became disillusioned with Houston and decided to move Becky and the family back to Dallas, where he planned to operate his own business doing appraisals for an insurance company he had come in contact with through his father.
For the Hoppers, in many respects, things were still good. Becky and Andy led an active social life, characterized in large part by enthusiastic parties at their home on Friday nights. Among many of their friends, they were regarded as a perfect family. Ginny and Crystal were beautiful young girls who got along marvelously with their playmates. Andy was a hardworking and apparently successful young entrepreneur. And Becky was an ardent homemaker who doubled as her husband’s secretary and bookkeeper. They settled into a neat three-bedroom brick house on a corner lot in the peaceful suburb of Garland.
On the surface, the Hoppers appeared to be classic yuppies. The facade they presented to the world was that of a young, white, fairly prosperous, all-American family. But there were shadows in their relationship that no one but they could see. Andy’s business, though improving, was not taking off as spectacularly as he had hoped; they were still having trouble making ends meet.
But that may have been the least of their problems. At this stage in their lives both Andy and his wife were using crystal and marijuana on a regular basis. To help pay for their drugs, they had worked out an agreement with a notorious Dallas marijuana dealer named James Lee Carver, Jr.
In the days before he became a major drug-world figure, Carver worked as a repairman for Andy’s father at a Houston automotive dealership, which was how Andy had first met him. By the time Andy and Carver connected again in Dallas, Carver was well on his way toward becoming, by his own admission, the country’s second largest marijuana dealer. When he was arrested and convicted in 1986, he estimated his net worth at $20 million and claimed to rule an empire that included houses, boats, airplanes, and bank accounts around the world.
Andy and Becky were never big players in Carver’s schemes, but where they fell short in volume, they made up with in enthusiasm. Almost as soon as they returned to Dallas, Andy and Becky worked out an arrangement with Carver whereby he would let them have marijuana at a cut-rate price and they would resell it to their friends, generating enough profit to pay for their own drug use. According to Becky, it was never a major operation, although Carver later claimed the couple was dealing as much as ten to fifteen pounds of good-grade marijuana a week.
During this period, the years of drug use seemed to catch up with the Hoppers, especially Andy. There were days when he worked furiously, from dawn until well after dark. And there were days when he did not work at all, electing to spend most of the day in bed or moping around the house in a state of semi-depression. His wildly fluctuating moods caused an increase in tension inside the family and began to undermine what was quickly becoming a fragile relationship. By the summer of 1983, it was apparent to both of them that their fast living was wrecking the marriage. Arguments were becoming more frequent and the potential for serious violence was growing.
Frightened by a vision of what that could lead to, Becky convinced her husband that the two of them should give up using crystal, although the marijuana smoking and dealing continued. Andy may have continued using speed on the sly, as well as cocaine. If he was, it might help explain some of the things that happened later.
Unnoticed by others for the most part, Andy and Becky, for all their public compatibility, were discovering that they had a basic personality difference. Andy, outwardly convivial and easygoing, actually had a hair-trigger temper and a perfectionist streak that sent Becky up the wall. For her part, Becky had uncovered within herself a feistiness that had never surfaced before, along with an uncontrollable impulse to needle her husband in areas where he was particularly sensitive. At home, she would provoke, he would respond, and the result would be a terrible battle in which Andy sometimes went beyond words.
Once, during such an argument, Andy shoved her. Although it didn’t seem that he had pushed her especially hard, she was wearing socks and standing on a newly waxed floor. As a result, her feet flew out from under her and she fell on her back, striking her head sharply on the floor. Andy was immediately contrite. Apologizing profusely, he lifted her body, weighing less than one hundred pounds, off the floor, set her on the couch, and ran to the kitchen to get ice to put on the growing bump. During another dispute Andy threw a plastic toy in the general direction of his wife, who was in another room. The toy hit a cushion, bounced up and hit Becky on the side of the face, giving her a black eye.
But these encounters were not all one-sided. One night in October 1983 Andy and Becky had made plans to attend a toga party, but at the last minute Andy said he was not sure he wanted to go. At first, Becky was surprised and puzzled by his reluctance since he was usually the one ready to party at any excuse. But the more she thought about his diffidence, the angrier she got. Although she nagged him into going, he was clearly reluctant. As a result, by the time they were ready to leave, the stage was set for a full-scale fight.
En route, Andy’s resolve not to attend returned. By the time they got to the house where the party was being held, Andy refused to go inside. Instead, he sat in the car brooding until he got bored and went to fetch Becky to go home. At Andy’s insistence, and over her objections, they left a few minutes later. Almost immediately they began to argue. She threw her glass of beer into Andy’s face. In response, Andy hit her in the chest with the back of his hand. Angry, she crawled into the backseat. They went to bed that night without speaking and four days later she initiated a separation and decided to take their two daughters, then seven and four, for an extended visit to her family in Pampa. In her mind, the separation might help bring both of them to their senses. Becky and the girls left Dallas on October 12, 1983, for the long drive across the barren West Texas plains.
Unknown to Becky until five years later, Andy was already in serious trouble. What Becky did not know was that some time earlier her husband had accepted a plain white envelope, allegedly from a body shop owner he knew named Brian Kreafle. By taking the envelope, he set into motion a series of events that forever changed his and Becky’s lives as well as those of many others.
15
By the summer of 1983, Andy had changed considerably from the bright-eyed youth who had gone off to a religious college nine years earlier with the intention of becoming a preacher. His zeal for religion, once absolute, had all but disappeared, as had his desire to excel in his vocation and his dedication to his family’s welfare. The deeper he got into financial trouble, the more drugs he took, and the more drugs he took, the worse his financial difficulties became. It was, nevertheless, a vicious circle that he was desperate to break. There must be a way, he told himself; there
had
to be a way. According to Andy, Brian Kreafle approached him outside his body shop one afternoon in mid-September 1983. Andy thought at first it might be an answer to his prayers.
“Do you know anyone who would like to make a little extra money?” Kreafle allegedly asked him. “Tax-free money,” he added quietly.
“How’s that?” Andy asked, suspecting that Kreafle was going to propose something illegal.
He knew some people who wanted a job done that involved a certain woman, Kreafle allegedly said.
“What kind of job?” Andy asked suspiciously.
“They want her taken care of,” Andy quoted Kreafle as saying.
Andy gulped. He knew what Kreafle meant: Somebody wanted the woman killed. His stomach turned over, but he was desperate enough for money to want to know more.
“I might know somebody like that,” Andy answered carefully.
Kreafle gave him a slow grin. “Think about it,” he said, handing Andy an unmarked envelope. “The people who want it done want it to look like a burglary or something.”
Andy nodded and accepted the envelope, tossing it through the window onto the seat of his car. A few minutes later he drove away. A few blocks away, he reached slowly for the envelope and ripped it open. Inside was $750 in cash, a promise to pay $750 more on completion of the job, a picture of a dark-haired woman who looked a few years older than he, and a typewritten data sheet. Skimming the information, Andy learned that the woman in the picture was named Rozanne Gailiunas; she was thirty-two years old; she lived with her young son at 804 Loganwood Drive in Richardson; she worked part-time for a pediatrician; and she drove a brown Cadillac Seville. He needed money, he told himself, but he didn’t need it that badly. At least that is what he thought at the time.
For the next few days, the envelope never left Andy’s mind; it remained in his possession, sitting unobtrusively in his car like a radioactive rock. I can get someone else to do the job, he told himself, quietly making contact with a guy he knew from high school, a guy Andy thought might be willing. But when he outlined the idea to his old high school chum, the guy laughed.
“That’s not enough money for that,” he chuckled. “If you’re thinking about doing it, you’re stupid.”
The idea ate at Andy; he couldn’t forget it and he couldn’t ignore it.
A few days later, he was driving by the intersection of Central Expressway and Belt Line Road when he saw his friend and drug supplier James Lee Carver.
“I want to talk to you,” Andy yelled out his car window.
“Okay,” Carver replied, pointing to a nearby restaurant. “Meet me in there.”
Over a cup of coffee, Andy told Carver that he had been approached about “making a hit” on a woman.
Carver stared at him. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I need the money,” Andy replied simply.
Thinking that he was trying to work up to asking him for a loan, Carver told him to forget about the hit. “If you need money, sell more pot,” he said.
Andy appeared to consider the suggestion. Thanking Carver for his advice, Andy left the table and returned to his car, leaving Carver with the impression that he had taken the drug dealer’s advice.
But Andy could not get the idea out of his mind. One afternoon he drove to Richardson to see if he could locate 804 Loganwood Drive. He found it with no difficulty and stopped in front, carefully studying the house. There was no car in the driveway, but Andy wondered if it was inside the closed garage. For several minutes, he sat silently watching the house for any indication that anyone was inside. Sitting there staring at the building, he began to get nervous. Get out of here, Andy, he told himself. Go away and forget about it.
He drove off, but he did not forget. A few days later he was back again, staring at the exterior and debating what to do. In the time since he had accepted the envelope, Andy had dipped into the cash, taking the money down to Dallas’s trendy Oak Lawn district where he bought crystal.